


the party

by Inky_Pens



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, chess players do not come for me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:57:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23701072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inky_Pens/pseuds/Inky_Pens
Summary: Taryn defied our father to marry the mischief. Locke pitted one sister against another and walked away all the more arrogant for it, leaving two teenage girls in the ruins of all the things they never said to each other.In our world, that’s just as much cause for celebration as any.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 11
Kudos: 80





	the party

**Author's Note:**

> (Someone listened to Billie Eilish's "when the party's over" on repeat a dozen times and it shows.)
> 
> Many thanks to my fic editor, who took this from a story I wanted to tell to a story worth telling.  
AO3: DarkoftheMoon/Twitter: xDarkoftheMoon

There was no need to smooth down my dress—a long, silky sheath that looked more like a nightgown than the customary tiered, fussy things fit for a revel—but my hands brushed nervously over my thighs anyway. Vivi gave it to me after a recent trip back to the mortal world for a few human necessities, loading my bags with more than a few non-necessities. She had chirped that it was too long on her, but as it just barely skimmed the tops of my feet, I realized she must have known better than to purchase a dress she would be swimming in. Did it really matter what I wore to the tenth revel in honor of the newlyweds? I’d grown to suspect the cause for such lengthy celebrations was not the marriage itself but the conquest. Taryn defied our father to marry the mischief. Locke pitted one sister against another and walked away all the more arrogant for it, leaving two teenage girls in the ruins of all the things they never said to each other.

In our world, that’s just as much cause for celebration as any.

To not go signaled something akin to weakness, perfect fodder for Folk gossip. Whispers of a resentful sister or unrequited love. Rumors that Locke may just undoubtedly start himself to further my humiliation and ire. No, I had resolved to make an appearance at every single party held in their honor until Locke grew bored with the pretense. Maybe then I would grow tired of my suffering, too.

Staring at myself in the mirror, at the plump red lips that sat prettily on my face, I suppose I owed myself a sliver of honesty for once. There was a reason I had asked Vivi to show me how to use the products in her bathroom. Mascara to darken lashes. Lipsticks and glosses in an assortment of colors, many of which seemed redundant despite her insisting differently. I spritz a decadent floral perfume, courtesy of Vivi’s suspicious generosity and steel myself for another evening spent wanting a boy who does not want me.

I guess Locke isn’t the only one living in pretense.

The revel is in full swing by the time I step into the maze, and the air is rife with sordid indulgences. Lovers in all corners have me hopping over tangles of limbs, mumbling apologies while my cheeks flame at the lascivious sight. Wine goblets and liquor-laden thimbles strewn about; the remnants of a party that had carried on far too long. At its center, the maze is adorned in cascades of tiny pink and white blossoms that remind me of the streamers my mom would hang up around the house for our birthdays. Chaise lounges and oversized pillows are grouped together for socializing around the clearance meant to serve as a dance floor. Twinkling lights bathe everyone in a soft golden glow that shimmers each time the lights dim and brighten. I am mesmerized by them, and the longer I gaze, wide-eyed in awe, I notice my whole body give way to their peaceful lull. Taryn had really outdone herself to make this soft and appealing for human eyes, so I can’t help but wonder if she had gone through the trouble for me. If the gentle gesture was intentionally reminiscent because she hoped I would come here and smile at her efforts. It was a makeshift apology if there ever was one.

I take my usual place farthest from the activities, but the Folk I pass exchange murmurs about my appearance—complimentary or disgust, I’m not entirely sure and cannot find it in me to pick my head up to stare them down and find out. My burning cheeks would betray the indignance anyway.

There isn’t an opportunity for debauchery that Cardan would miss, and I spot him easily because I know where to look. Instantly I regret making eye contact to find him staring back at me with a half-drunken gaze. There is a heat in his stare that brings a flush blooming over my skin. I wonder how he could look at me this way when boys and girls alike curl around his body, stroking him in places I fight not to look. Their builds are slender, a curated beauty that defies nature and could not be more natural in Faerie. I’m keenly aware of the way the silk stretches against my curves, straining against the fullness of my breasts and doing nothing to hide the peaks of my nipples. I had to forego underwear per Vivi’s strict instructions not to show any lines, and while I’m a little uncomfortable by the exposure so unlike me, the feel of the light, smooth fabric raises gooseflesh on my skin in anticipation.

As if reading my mind, Cardan’s eyes drop lower, inch by inch, and I watch him closely enough to see the moment he catches sight of them. My heart hammers in my chest as he licks his lips slowly, appreciatively, which connects directly to the crest of my thighs where I begin tingling. It’s as though he senses that, too, because his lips part and I swear I can see his jaw tremble with what looks like a shuddering breath. Before the momentum of this silent exchange builds more to my embarrassment, one particularly amorous pixie comes into focus as she flutters around to place open-mouth kisses beneath his jaw. It snaps me back to the present like a rubber band stretched too taut, and my body cools considerably. The wind rushes into my lungs like someone starved for it, bringing with it the clarity I had kept with me all day leading up to this revel. I am such an idiot. A foolish, overstimulated idiot, one Oriana would follow around chirping _I told you so!_ if I didn’t already vehemently deny any implications. I ought to go home now, having successfully made a courteous presence, but to leave so soon after my arrival feels like a waste of my earlier effort. Worse, it feels like I lost.

Further saving me from humiliation is my twin, bounding up to me with a carefree joy that looks breathtaking on her until I spot the nevermore smeared on her lower lip. I’m pulled into her exuberant embrace as she squeals about the décor.

“Do you like them? You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to get the flowers just right, but they look perfect, don’t you think? Locke mentioned Vivi showing him a picture from one of our birthdays—_so embarrassing, right?_—and he was fascinated by the decorations Mom had put up; I just knew I had to recreate it.”

Insult flashes on my face before I catch myself and school my features back into neutral indifference. So she hadn’t done this for me. I would laugh at how silly and stupid her “theme” was if the knife between my ribs wasn’t twisting. I stop listening to her carrying on about it, and not long after her whirlwind of an arrival is she making a hasty excuse to play hostess to her new friends. Except she uses the words _our friends_, meaning her and Locke, and the implication of Taryn fitting so easily into this life by way of her new husband makes me a little sick in my mouth. It’s what she wanted all along. To be as close to one of them as her mortality could muster, to have them poking fun with her and no longer _at _her. But what Taryn doesn’t see is how cruelly they will turn on her when the luster of her marriage grows dull. When Locke will green gown other girls, mortal and faerie alike, in this very same maze without Taryn’s consent, because creatures like Locke and Cardan are incapable of anything more than fulfilling their self-interests and bulldozing brown-haired twins who wished otherwise.

_Assholes_.

Without much care or thought, I reach for a passing servant’s tray, grabbing a spoon laden with a sticky compote covered in an amber syrup. A quick sniff and I decide it has to be innocuous, but before my lips close around the morsel, an arm snakes out from behind me and jerks the gold utensil out of my hand. I know the gaudy-ringed fingers instantly and round on Cardan. He stands close enough that I can see the odd alarm reflecting in his eyes.

I ready myself to bark out my indignation but he cuts me to the quick with a challenging glare and quirked brow. “I suspect you have had your fill of faerie fruit to last a lifetime.”

_Why would Taryn serve such a thing here and not warn me?_

While I silently ask myself if Taryn would do such a thing intentionally, Cardan pops the spoon in his mouth and flips it over to lick it clean. He stares at my mouth while doing so, and the tingling sensation strikes again in full force, but right on the heels of it is a clarity I am desperate to hold onto.

I force myself to look anywhere but his mouth and notice his courtiers glaring daggers at me for their prince’s absence. “Are you not having enough fun that you are resigned to watching my _every_ move while I am here?” The bitterness is difficult to keep out of my tone, but practicing indifference is a skill I have learned from the master himself.

Cardan waves his hand in front of me. “They are just distractions, dear Jude.”

I snorted. “I don’t care what you do, Cardan.” It is an easy lie because I’ve told it so many times.

Slowly, he backs me into an alcove secluded from prying eyes, and because I know this game well, I don’t protest when his fingertips skim my sides. It feels like weeks since his hands were on me instead of only hours. We have given chase to this cat-and-mouse game since the newlywed revels began, each night taking and giving as the other sees fit, but tonight it seems that I am the mouse. Judging by the smirk present on his lips and reflected in his eyes, I suspect Cardan knows who was the upper-hand here, too.

“I think you do care,” he whispers conspiratorially. He lowers his head to my shoulder. “I think it nags at you.” I feel his soft, plush lips press into my bare skin. “I think it makes you wet.”

My instinct is to tense, but it is only seconds before he suckles the junction of my neck, pulling a strangled whimper from my throat. My fingers fumble with the buttons on his shirt as the desperation to expose him as he has exposed me begins to close in. He does not laugh, he never laughs at my newborn experience, but the private chuckle he breathes into my shoulder conveys his pleasure at my frenetic state. He likes me like this, I realize, but I’m surprised to find that I _like _that he likes me this way. I want to please him. I want him to know my pleasure belongs to him and his to me.

“Cardan, help me.” I am just short of whining, but he quickly obliges, removing his shirt with ease as the buttons scatter to ground around our feet. It is my turn to latch myself onto his neck, but it isn’t enough to sate the appetite I have built. My mouth wanders lower, stopping at where a hard nipple peaks and lapping it with the flat of my tongue, flicking it with the tip. One hand holds the back of my head to him while the other tugs roughly at my breast, almost painfully as though he wants the ache to stay with me longer after this encounter. I see my opening and seize it with vulgarity, dropping to my knees and pulling him out of his breeches without bothering to move them down his legs. I wonder if his cock is always in this state: erect, firm, veins prominent against the deep flush of his skin. In my marveling, I almost miss the noise he makes above me. It’s a soft sound that I am sure he did not mean to escape, but it sounds beautiful coming from him. It sounds like honeyed agony.

As much as I want to tease, to run my bottom lip along the precum and make a show of enjoying it, my thighs are trembling with anticipation. My hands grip the fabric of his trousers at the back of his knees, anchoring myself to him before I take him into my mouth with no preamble. There are nights when I see this task to completion, satisfied with my fingers between my legs to relieve the ache, but this is as much a punishment to Cardan as it is to me. Denying him access to my body is as much about denying myself the perverse validation from his undivided attention. Tonight, however, in this thin silk sheath rippling over my skin, I find myself too needy and desperate for my own pleasure. His fingers card through my hair, holding the back of my head gently, only ever gently, until I’ve pulled him in to hit the back of my throat with a lewd sound. I swallow, just to let him know I can, then close my lips around him and begin a pace to the tune of his staccato grunting and gasping. Saliva pools into my mouth from the fullness of him, dribbling down my chin, but Cardan is not so far gone that he isn’t attuned to the minutiae of my body. I feel his thumb at the corner of my mouth, swiping up the spit and lift my eyes just in time to see him bring that very same thumb to his lips. I don’t realize the mewling sounds are coming from me until his hips jerk forward on their own volition, chasing the sound and encouraging more.

I release him with a pop, panting and on my knees, waiting for him to—

He bends over at the waist to take my face in his hands and kiss me fully on the mouth. A hot, consuming kiss that feels especially vulnerable in this position beneath him. But then he joins me on the ground and pushes me back onto grass that feels like pinpricks against the fabric of my dress. The kiss moves to every dip and curve of my face, fluttering at my cupid’s bow and trembling beneath my chin. Cardan grips my thigh and lifts my leg to his hip until he is positioned at my entrance. His fingers reach under my dress to feel for my underwear, and it is a delight to watch his face the moment he realizes there is nothing separating him from me. That he can take what he wants easily. That he’s been able to all along.

“Jude,” he breathes against my mouth. “My sweet Jude.”

My response is lost to the sensation of him entering me with no resistance, the wet heat of my cunt slick with desire, but these days it feels like I am always ready for him. I cant my hips to meet his before his thrust is complete, instinct taking over to chase the sensation to its highest peak. It’s a finish line I am all too eager to race to, but Cardan moves slowly, deliberately. As if he’s savoring every puff of air from my mouth against his shoulder or the audible gasp when he hits the spot deep enough inside me that sends a spasm like a tidal wave throughout my body. With his fingers, he is memorizing the dip of where my waist meets my hip. With his lips, he studies the softness of my eyelids. Cardan relishes each second of these encounters, and I, alight with fire and frenzy, awash with shame, can only think of the moment where I am thrown from the precipice and freefalling into ecstasy.

“Cardan,” I mumble, keenly aware of the people—_my sister_—just out of sight but not deaf to the world around them. “Please.”

He shushes me then, mouth on mine with more of a smile than a smirk. “I know what you need.”

He tucks the bend of my knee into the crook of his elbow, pushing my right leg higher until the length of his cock feels just on the edge of too much, too deep, too—

I grab at my breasts to relieve the ache, and it’s a sight that spurs Cardan to move faster, finally. His grunts are smothered against the crook of my neck, nipping and suckling the taut flesh there, and it’s all I can do to tilt my head back for lungsful of air without moaning loudly. I am so close, and if we had the time, I could maybe come from this alone after another several minutes, but people will notice his absence and eventually come looking, and it’s that urgency that has me begging him in dirty whispers for _more._

He must sense himself growing closer, too, but he never breaks stride as he slips his fingers between our bodies and uses his thumb to rub perfect circles on my clit. The pressure is exquisite and punctuated by each slap of his increasingly erratic jerk of hips against mine.

“When you come,” he growls into my ear, “I want to hear you.”

I think I shake my head. I _think_ some semblance of responsibility in my brain tells me I cannot lose myself entirely in this moment, as needy as I am for it. 

But Cardan is not having it. His mouth moves to mine, a hot, searing kiss that steals the last of my breath from me. His tongue licks the roof of my mouth, and even though my entire body is a livewire, I still shudder at the tickle it sends down my spine. I try to reciprocate, try to close my lips around his, but everything starts to go hazy, stars start to crowd in at the corners of my vision, and I know I am just holding myself back. I know the moment I hit the crest, I will be gone to the abyss of sensation and feeling that only Cardan has given me. Only Cardan _could_ ever give me. 

The last thing I hear before I fall is soft and gentle. “Come undone with me, my sweet. Let go.”

\---

I’m in a daze while he removes his shirt for the first time this entire encounter so he can clean the mess dripping from me before it becomes visible to the revelers amassed in the maze. Nothing can be done for the wrinkles of my dress, but my bliss-addled brain, for once, does not care. I watch Cardan put his shirt back on, a new wet spot right over the place where his heart lies just beneath. My cheeks flame while my throat constricts, and I wonder if this is something he’s done intentionally.

As I bring myself to my feet, I try to pair the boy who goads me into the river of sprites with the one who caresses the nape of my neck when he’s kissing me. I try to remember who started this ten nights ago. Which of us was the first to break, the first to trade heated glances for stolen kisses? Who relinquished their body first?

Cardan makes his way back to the revel as if he’d been on nothing more than a midnight stroll. He returns to his place with the courtiers, loose-limbed and taut all at once, and intentionally, always intentionally, smears more nevermore than necessary across his mouth. I watch him lose himself to it in disgust, with a fissure of something else running through it. Despair, maybe.

The maze once again yields to me as I push through it, desperate for a different kind of relief now. I will myself to forget that Cardan is anything but dangerous. Not a pawn to be held, but a king with more power than I fully understand. A begrudging king at that. One who would sacrifice his knight when the opportunity struck, unless I learned to play this game better. That this has nowhere to go because I knew the ending from the very start.

But none of that made sense when I was with him. Because when I was with him, whether Cardan was holding my gaze across the revelers, or holding my hands as he led me in a dance, or holding my body as he pressed me into the soft grass beneath us, when I was with him, I could think of nothing but him. Wanted nothing but him. These were precarious moments, outlandish moments, where I thought I would give up all the security that power could offer me if it meant Cardan would want me as his. The words clawed their way up my throat each night we spent together, and I swallowed them down like knives, cutting my insides to keep me safe. Perhaps to keep him safe, too. Nothing good could come out of whatever _this was_. I knew it, felt it deep within my bones, and yet, I thought myself a girl worthy of this game.


End file.
